Planning
Brooke and I couldn't have been more excited when our friends Mark and Shauna displayed an interest in backpacking. The fact that they also wanted to actually go with us for a weekend was even better. In the months leading up to this trip, Mark and I made two trips to REI and countless trips to our local EMS which is only a few miles from our homes. Gearing up Mark and his wife for this trip was almost as much fun as when Brooke and I geared up for our first trip, and it brought back a lot of fond memories. I'm no gear expert, but the mistakes Brooke and I made on our first trip are well-chronicled, and this information I passed on to Mark.
We took a drive out to REI with a laundry list of items that Mark and Shauna needed for their first expedition into the great wild. Being exponentially more successful than I at this point in our lives, Mark much preferred buying everything than renting it, which is something every backpacker can admire. Many packs were worn throughout the store, and Mark eventually settled on his Osprey Stratos 40. Two water bottles, a Leatherman (it has carbon fiber!), and multiple other small goodies later, we exited the store with lighter wallets and decided to hit EMS and Dick's in an honest attempt at completely gearing up in one calendar day. We got some more goodies at EMS, including two Big Agnes Air Core sleeping pads for Mark and his bride, and called it a day. Mark rounded out his shopping over the intraweb in the following days, including two ALPS Mountaineering Clearwater 20* sleeping bags and a Big Agnes Parkview 2 tent. Shauna would be carrying Brooke's old EMS Summit TL that she so painfully donned in the Tetons & Yellowstone, while Brooke got to try out her brand new Granite Gear Nimbus Latitude Ki we got at EMS.
I'd like to take a moment here to flaunt my gear shopping ability. As you may well know, Granite Gear makes one of the best and most expensive backpacks on the market. While browsing through EMS this past spring, I spotted a backpack on the clearance shelf. I checked it out, saw it was a Granite Gear, and immediate thought that I needed this. Further inspection showed it to be a woman's pack, and knowing that Brooke needed a new pack, I motioned her over to see my new find. She put it on, weighed it down with the provided weights, and traipsed around the store for twenty minutes or so. She bragged about its comfort and quality, and we saw that it was considerably larger than her old pack at 3900 cubic inches. The price tag was originally marked at $279.99, so the purchase was in question until we saw its sale price. $42.98. I asked the sales clerk what, if anything, was wrong with the pack to force the store to sell it for $42.98. Nothing was wrong with it, she said, it's what the store considers "aged inventory." Once a product has sat on the shelves long enough, EMS sells it at an incredible discount. We got a pack that retails for almost $300 for $42.98. Game, set, match. It was on!
Now that both couples were fully geared we had to figure out where, exactly, our trip would take place. Being located in Massachusetts narrowed it down to three possible spots for a weekend getaway. The Adirondacks in upstate New York, the Green Mountains in Vermont, or the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Being intimately familiar with the White Mountains from snowmobiling them for almost two decades, I decided that New Hampshire would be our best bet. Higher elevations, less population, and more wildlife made the choice relatively easy for us. What made it difficult was finding the best loop to do in two days that would provide us with either a river or a pond to fish. Mark and I had just received two hand-me-down collapsible spinning rods from my dad's vast collection of unused outdoor gear, and we were eager to catch our ladies a delicious bass.
Brooke and I spent countless lunch breaks at our local Barnes & Noble reading AMC's various New England and New Hampshire trail guides trying to find the perfect hike. Towards the end of one hiking guide, the writer divulged what he thought to be the best-kept secret in the Whites, a hike known as Rogers Ledge & Unknown Pond. In far northern New Hampshire, the same glaciers that carved out what is now known as the Connecticut River that separates New Hampshire and Vermont also left thousands of small glacial ponds scattered throughout the mountains. This trail was a 13-mile loop bringing you up to Unknown Pond for the night, and then returning you to the trailhead in Milan, NH. After reading and re-reading the trail description so vividly painted by this writer, Brooke and I bought the book and hurriedly shared the good news with our friends. The distance was easy, the elevation gain was manageable, and best of all, Mark and I might be able to catch the aforementioned bass we needed to impress our women.
Day 1: Drive to Gorham, NH
We headed up to Gorham, NH on a Friday after work and spent the night at the Town & Country Motor Inn, a place I have been going to with my family since I was a child. We quickly checked in and while the girls relaxed in the room with some garbage on MTV or something, Mark and I went to the hotel bar for a few beverages. Morning came, to no surprise, and we packed up the room and headed out.
Day 2: And They're Off!
We stopped in town for a quick breakfast, but that turned into an hour-long affair. We were still able to hit the road by 10am, and because it was only a half-hour drive or so we were still fine time-wise. The ride to the fish hatchery, where the trail head was, was pretty nerve-wracking. We had made the huge mistake of not filling up our water supply, and the last 10 or 12 miles outside of Berlin were sparsely populated. If we couldn't find water at the trail head, we would have to either A) take a huge, stupid risk and hope to find a water supply along the trail, or B) drive all the way back to Berlin to buy some. We finally saw the sign for the fish hatchery and took the access road several more miles to where we would eventually park. One of the state Fish & Wildlife buildings had a few trucks parked outside of it, and the kind gentleman inside informed us that we could fill out water bottles right from their spigot. Hallelujah! Problem solved. We double and triple-checked everything before we locked the Murano one last time, and hit the trail. According to the map and trail guide it would be about five miles to Rogers Ledge and another two miles to the sites at Unknown Pond, where the four of us were to spend the night. The hiking was pretty easygoing for the first few miles. There had been some rain recently, and considerable snow melt in the higher elevations, so we were hiking through a lot of muddy sections and quite a few water crossings. The trail appeared to be more utilized by the local moose population than hikers, but to our disappointment we didn't see a single animal all weekend, and for good reason: the four of us loudly conversed the entire 13-mile hike, so any animal within 500 yards of us knew of our presence. Because of all of the rain, the brook that ran parallel to the trail for the first few miles was at a roar. Every few steps I would traverse the waterway's edge with my eyes trying to find moose but despite hundreds, if not thousands, of moose tracks, I saw nothing. We took our first break about two miles in under a nice canopy of hemlocks. It was the first dry section of trail we had seen, so we sat, drank water, and conversed some more. Mark and Shauna seemed to be enjoying themselves so far, despite Shauna's backpack treating her shoulders much in the same fashion as it treated Brooke's shoulders in Yellowstone. We stuffed some towels under each shoulder strap, and she was good to go.
We reached the trail junction to Rogers Ledge a few more miles after our break. We dropped our packs off to the side of the trail because having seen only one hiker in the five miles we had hiked, we had faith that our stuff would still be there when we returned. It was a half-mile ascent to the top of Rogers Ledge, and we figured it would be much easier if we climbed it free of our shoulder-mounted anchors. After a steady climb, we reached the top. It had a cluster of pines in the center, but the edges were wide open providing some pretty sweet views of thePresidential Range to the south. It was the perfect lunch spot, and we had planned accordingly. Our subs were kind of smushed, but regardless of their appearance, they tasted great with some chips and gatorade while enjoying a nice cool breeze and unobstructed mountain view. Once back at the trail junction, we shouldered our packs and hurried off to finish the last two miles of the trip. Getting there relatively quickly and setting up camp was becoming more important by the hour, as dark storm clouds were rolling in from the west. The next mile of hiking was similar to the first, as we carved our way through thick patches of hemlocks and clearings of long-needled pines. We thought we might have found Unknown Pond, but knew it was too early in the hike to be there already. What we had found, though, was Kilback Pond. Another incredibly perfect spot to sit and watch for moose but because the aforementioned rain clouds were taunting us from a distance, we had no time to spare. Our first big hurdle reared its ugly head at Kilback Pond. The trail crossed a section of the pond with a small foot bridge made of felled trees. Thankfully, though, the area beavers had damned up the section where the pond drains into a stream so the foot bridge was flooded by more than a foot of water, and it was over waist-deep if we opted to avoid the bridge to either side. Brooke had smartly brought her cheap flip-flops for around camp, so she took it upon herself to be the first to cross. With hiking boots safely secured to her pack and her socks neatly stuffed into her pockets, she slowly made her way across the flooded bridge in the icy, knee-deep water. Because of the flooding, the bridge fell about four feet short of reaching the embankment at the end. Brooke's only choice was to balance herself on felled branches that provided little to no support. Being the athlete that she is, she made it look easy and made it to dry land safely and easily. It wasn't as easy for the rest of us. I went next, but had to go barefoot as I had packed no camp shoes or water shoes. The submerged logs were covered with a film of silt and freshwater algae (yes, it does exist!) that made the logs treacherously slippery to cross. Baby-stepping my way across the slippery, underwater logs with 25 pounds on my back was hard and slow going, but I made it. I wasn't as lucky at the end, though, and managed to slip and dunk my left leg into the drink. Boots and socks were dry, though, and after Mark and Shauna successfully made it across, we towel-dried our feet and continued on our way to Unknown Pond.
Our last mile or so to Unknown Pond, set pretty high in the mountains, was painful. The trail climbed about 1,000 feet in less than a mile, and it was mile number seven for us for the day. After stopping every couple hundred yards or so, we peaked and had a casual descent down to the pond. The pond is nestled in among pines, and sits in the shadow of Mount Cabot. We got to the campsites and because we were the first group of hikers to arrive, had first choice of sites. Site #5 would be our home away from home, and it had two tent sites about ten feet apart from each other. Because of the storm clouds that had been chasing us all day, Mark and I hurriedly set up our tents, the Big Agnes Parkview and REI Half Dome. A few more things were to be crossed off the list before Mark and I could go in search of that delicious bass we had been planning to catch: the camp kitchen was established, firewood was taken from dry, felled trees nearby, and dinner was planned. Mark I unpacked the collapsible spinning rods we had packed and threw on some Rapala plugs. Unfortunately, we now know that Unknown Pond has no fish. It is glacial melt from the ice ages and because it has no source, and is not stocked, there are nothing but frogs in it. Well, we fished for about a half hour or so and our lack of patience got the better of us. We figured we were better served to go back to the campsite and build a fire, which we did. We made some small wood shavings with our knives (Benchmade Griptilian andSpyderco Tenacious), and with my firesteel made a nice fire that we had going for several hours into the night. The sun was beginning to set, and our appetites were starting to bark, so we all chipped in and got dinner ready. In a rather proud He-Man moment I had, I cut open a can of brown bread with my knife - just sawed right through it. (That might have been the best part of the trip for me.) Anywho, the brown bread cooked in the large pan placed over the fire and the baked beans cooked over the smaller pan set on top of the canister stove. When we finished up, we cleaned out the smaller pan and made some Easy Mac, too. As anyone who hikes or camps knows, a good hot meal in the woods is second to none. After dinner and clean up, we just sat around the fire that was slowly dying due to a lack of available dead, dry wood. We obviously didn't want to fell any trees just for burning, and the remaining wood on the ground was wet from the recent rains. We retreated to our tents for the night, and were greeted with the pitter patter of rain drops moments after zipping up the rain fly. It poured the entire night, and yet again my Coleman Taos that is generously rated to 32* let me down. It was no colder than the high-40's, and yet I shivered in a fetal position all night. Needless to say, I bought my new EMS Solstice 20* bag within a few weeks of getting home.
Day 3: Hike to car & Drive to home
When morning came, we saw how well-built our two tents were. It rained nothing short of a "pour" the entire night, and the insides of our tents were bone dry. Everything stored under the rain flaps were dry as well, with the exception of the bottom half of my pack. We donned our rain shells and made a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon with black coffee before packing everything up and heading out. The tents were an absolute mess to pack, and proved to be equally as messy when unpacking at home, too. Once the whole site was packed up and cleaned up, and we made sure follow the "leave no trace" mantra, we headed out on the trail for an easy five mile hike back out to the car. The trail was a slow descent through awesome hemlock groves and it eventually met up with a different brook than the one we hiked next to on our way into the woods. The last few miles meandered along parallel to this river, with several river crossings. After two semi-monotonous miles of flat terrain, we saw the trail register. Each couple signed their names and where they spent the night, and we walked another mile along the access road back to the Murano. We had hiked 13 miles in two days, and successfully indoctrinated our friends into backpacking. Much like Yellowstone, though, when Brooke had a difficult go of things with her uncomfortable EMS pack, Shauna was equally frustrated and pained by the backpack, so off to eBay it goes! It's going to take real arm twisting to get Mark and I back out to REI to shop for a pack for his wife, for sure.
The last leg of the trip was the easiest. We stopped in Gorham for lunch at a pizza shop, and then once we hit the road with Brooke driving, I slept in the passenger's seat, while Mark and Shauna conked out in the backseat. Three hours later we were back in Massachusetts, having logged another successful hiking trip in the books.
Brooke and I couldn't have been more excited when our friends Mark and Shauna displayed an interest in backpacking. The fact that they also wanted to actually go with us for a weekend was even better. In the months leading up to this trip, Mark and I made two trips to REI and countless trips to our local EMS which is only a few miles from our homes. Gearing up Mark and his wife for this trip was almost as much fun as when Brooke and I geared up for our first trip, and it brought back a lot of fond memories. I'm no gear expert, but the mistakes Brooke and I made on our first trip are well-chronicled, and this information I passed on to Mark.
We took a drive out to REI with a laundry list of items that Mark and Shauna needed for their first expedition into the great wild. Being exponentially more successful than I at this point in our lives, Mark much preferred buying everything than renting it, which is something every backpacker can admire. Many packs were worn throughout the store, and Mark eventually settled on his Osprey Stratos 40. Two water bottles, a Leatherman (it has carbon fiber!), and multiple other small goodies later, we exited the store with lighter wallets and decided to hit EMS and Dick's in an honest attempt at completely gearing up in one calendar day. We got some more goodies at EMS, including two Big Agnes Air Core sleeping pads for Mark and his bride, and called it a day. Mark rounded out his shopping over the intraweb in the following days, including two ALPS Mountaineering Clearwater 20* sleeping bags and a Big Agnes Parkview 2 tent. Shauna would be carrying Brooke's old EMS Summit TL that she so painfully donned in the Tetons & Yellowstone, while Brooke got to try out her brand new Granite Gear Nimbus Latitude Ki we got at EMS.
I'd like to take a moment here to flaunt my gear shopping ability. As you may well know, Granite Gear makes one of the best and most expensive backpacks on the market. While browsing through EMS this past spring, I spotted a backpack on the clearance shelf. I checked it out, saw it was a Granite Gear, and immediate thought that I needed this. Further inspection showed it to be a woman's pack, and knowing that Brooke needed a new pack, I motioned her over to see my new find. She put it on, weighed it down with the provided weights, and traipsed around the store for twenty minutes or so. She bragged about its comfort and quality, and we saw that it was considerably larger than her old pack at 3900 cubic inches. The price tag was originally marked at $279.99, so the purchase was in question until we saw its sale price. $42.98. I asked the sales clerk what, if anything, was wrong with the pack to force the store to sell it for $42.98. Nothing was wrong with it, she said, it's what the store considers "aged inventory." Once a product has sat on the shelves long enough, EMS sells it at an incredible discount. We got a pack that retails for almost $300 for $42.98. Game, set, match. It was on!
Now that both couples were fully geared we had to figure out where, exactly, our trip would take place. Being located in Massachusetts narrowed it down to three possible spots for a weekend getaway. The Adirondacks in upstate New York, the Green Mountains in Vermont, or the White Mountains in New Hampshire. Being intimately familiar with the White Mountains from snowmobiling them for almost two decades, I decided that New Hampshire would be our best bet. Higher elevations, less population, and more wildlife made the choice relatively easy for us. What made it difficult was finding the best loop to do in two days that would provide us with either a river or a pond to fish. Mark and I had just received two hand-me-down collapsible spinning rods from my dad's vast collection of unused outdoor gear, and we were eager to catch our ladies a delicious bass.
Brooke and I spent countless lunch breaks at our local Barnes & Noble reading AMC's various New England and New Hampshire trail guides trying to find the perfect hike. Towards the end of one hiking guide, the writer divulged what he thought to be the best-kept secret in the Whites, a hike known as Rogers Ledge & Unknown Pond. In far northern New Hampshire, the same glaciers that carved out what is now known as the Connecticut River that separates New Hampshire and Vermont also left thousands of small glacial ponds scattered throughout the mountains. This trail was a 13-mile loop bringing you up to Unknown Pond for the night, and then returning you to the trailhead in Milan, NH. After reading and re-reading the trail description so vividly painted by this writer, Brooke and I bought the book and hurriedly shared the good news with our friends. The distance was easy, the elevation gain was manageable, and best of all, Mark and I might be able to catch the aforementioned bass we needed to impress our women.
Day 1: Drive to Gorham, NH
We headed up to Gorham, NH on a Friday after work and spent the night at the Town & Country Motor Inn, a place I have been going to with my family since I was a child. We quickly checked in and while the girls relaxed in the room with some garbage on MTV or something, Mark and I went to the hotel bar for a few beverages. Morning came, to no surprise, and we packed up the room and headed out.
Day 2: And They're Off!
We stopped in town for a quick breakfast, but that turned into an hour-long affair. We were still able to hit the road by 10am, and because it was only a half-hour drive or so we were still fine time-wise. The ride to the fish hatchery, where the trail head was, was pretty nerve-wracking. We had made the huge mistake of not filling up our water supply, and the last 10 or 12 miles outside of Berlin were sparsely populated. If we couldn't find water at the trail head, we would have to either A) take a huge, stupid risk and hope to find a water supply along the trail, or B) drive all the way back to Berlin to buy some. We finally saw the sign for the fish hatchery and took the access road several more miles to where we would eventually park. One of the state Fish & Wildlife buildings had a few trucks parked outside of it, and the kind gentleman inside informed us that we could fill out water bottles right from their spigot. Hallelujah! Problem solved. We double and triple-checked everything before we locked the Murano one last time, and hit the trail. According to the map and trail guide it would be about five miles to Rogers Ledge and another two miles to the sites at Unknown Pond, where the four of us were to spend the night. The hiking was pretty easygoing for the first few miles. There had been some rain recently, and considerable snow melt in the higher elevations, so we were hiking through a lot of muddy sections and quite a few water crossings. The trail appeared to be more utilized by the local moose population than hikers, but to our disappointment we didn't see a single animal all weekend, and for good reason: the four of us loudly conversed the entire 13-mile hike, so any animal within 500 yards of us knew of our presence. Because of all of the rain, the brook that ran parallel to the trail for the first few miles was at a roar. Every few steps I would traverse the waterway's edge with my eyes trying to find moose but despite hundreds, if not thousands, of moose tracks, I saw nothing. We took our first break about two miles in under a nice canopy of hemlocks. It was the first dry section of trail we had seen, so we sat, drank water, and conversed some more. Mark and Shauna seemed to be enjoying themselves so far, despite Shauna's backpack treating her shoulders much in the same fashion as it treated Brooke's shoulders in Yellowstone. We stuffed some towels under each shoulder strap, and she was good to go.
We reached the trail junction to Rogers Ledge a few more miles after our break. We dropped our packs off to the side of the trail because having seen only one hiker in the five miles we had hiked, we had faith that our stuff would still be there when we returned. It was a half-mile ascent to the top of Rogers Ledge, and we figured it would be much easier if we climbed it free of our shoulder-mounted anchors. After a steady climb, we reached the top. It had a cluster of pines in the center, but the edges were wide open providing some pretty sweet views of thePresidential Range to the south. It was the perfect lunch spot, and we had planned accordingly. Our subs were kind of smushed, but regardless of their appearance, they tasted great with some chips and gatorade while enjoying a nice cool breeze and unobstructed mountain view. Once back at the trail junction, we shouldered our packs and hurried off to finish the last two miles of the trip. Getting there relatively quickly and setting up camp was becoming more important by the hour, as dark storm clouds were rolling in from the west. The next mile of hiking was similar to the first, as we carved our way through thick patches of hemlocks and clearings of long-needled pines. We thought we might have found Unknown Pond, but knew it was too early in the hike to be there already. What we had found, though, was Kilback Pond. Another incredibly perfect spot to sit and watch for moose but because the aforementioned rain clouds were taunting us from a distance, we had no time to spare. Our first big hurdle reared its ugly head at Kilback Pond. The trail crossed a section of the pond with a small foot bridge made of felled trees. Thankfully, though, the area beavers had damned up the section where the pond drains into a stream so the foot bridge was flooded by more than a foot of water, and it was over waist-deep if we opted to avoid the bridge to either side. Brooke had smartly brought her cheap flip-flops for around camp, so she took it upon herself to be the first to cross. With hiking boots safely secured to her pack and her socks neatly stuffed into her pockets, she slowly made her way across the flooded bridge in the icy, knee-deep water. Because of the flooding, the bridge fell about four feet short of reaching the embankment at the end. Brooke's only choice was to balance herself on felled branches that provided little to no support. Being the athlete that she is, she made it look easy and made it to dry land safely and easily. It wasn't as easy for the rest of us. I went next, but had to go barefoot as I had packed no camp shoes or water shoes. The submerged logs were covered with a film of silt and freshwater algae (yes, it does exist!) that made the logs treacherously slippery to cross. Baby-stepping my way across the slippery, underwater logs with 25 pounds on my back was hard and slow going, but I made it. I wasn't as lucky at the end, though, and managed to slip and dunk my left leg into the drink. Boots and socks were dry, though, and after Mark and Shauna successfully made it across, we towel-dried our feet and continued on our way to Unknown Pond.
Our last mile or so to Unknown Pond, set pretty high in the mountains, was painful. The trail climbed about 1,000 feet in less than a mile, and it was mile number seven for us for the day. After stopping every couple hundred yards or so, we peaked and had a casual descent down to the pond. The pond is nestled in among pines, and sits in the shadow of Mount Cabot. We got to the campsites and because we were the first group of hikers to arrive, had first choice of sites. Site #5 would be our home away from home, and it had two tent sites about ten feet apart from each other. Because of the storm clouds that had been chasing us all day, Mark and I hurriedly set up our tents, the Big Agnes Parkview and REI Half Dome. A few more things were to be crossed off the list before Mark and I could go in search of that delicious bass we had been planning to catch: the camp kitchen was established, firewood was taken from dry, felled trees nearby, and dinner was planned. Mark I unpacked the collapsible spinning rods we had packed and threw on some Rapala plugs. Unfortunately, we now know that Unknown Pond has no fish. It is glacial melt from the ice ages and because it has no source, and is not stocked, there are nothing but frogs in it. Well, we fished for about a half hour or so and our lack of patience got the better of us. We figured we were better served to go back to the campsite and build a fire, which we did. We made some small wood shavings with our knives (Benchmade Griptilian andSpyderco Tenacious), and with my firesteel made a nice fire that we had going for several hours into the night. The sun was beginning to set, and our appetites were starting to bark, so we all chipped in and got dinner ready. In a rather proud He-Man moment I had, I cut open a can of brown bread with my knife - just sawed right through it. (That might have been the best part of the trip for me.) Anywho, the brown bread cooked in the large pan placed over the fire and the baked beans cooked over the smaller pan set on top of the canister stove. When we finished up, we cleaned out the smaller pan and made some Easy Mac, too. As anyone who hikes or camps knows, a good hot meal in the woods is second to none. After dinner and clean up, we just sat around the fire that was slowly dying due to a lack of available dead, dry wood. We obviously didn't want to fell any trees just for burning, and the remaining wood on the ground was wet from the recent rains. We retreated to our tents for the night, and were greeted with the pitter patter of rain drops moments after zipping up the rain fly. It poured the entire night, and yet again my Coleman Taos that is generously rated to 32* let me down. It was no colder than the high-40's, and yet I shivered in a fetal position all night. Needless to say, I bought my new EMS Solstice 20* bag within a few weeks of getting home.
Day 3: Hike to car & Drive to home
When morning came, we saw how well-built our two tents were. It rained nothing short of a "pour" the entire night, and the insides of our tents were bone dry. Everything stored under the rain flaps were dry as well, with the exception of the bottom half of my pack. We donned our rain shells and made a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon with black coffee before packing everything up and heading out. The tents were an absolute mess to pack, and proved to be equally as messy when unpacking at home, too. Once the whole site was packed up and cleaned up, and we made sure follow the "leave no trace" mantra, we headed out on the trail for an easy five mile hike back out to the car. The trail was a slow descent through awesome hemlock groves and it eventually met up with a different brook than the one we hiked next to on our way into the woods. The last few miles meandered along parallel to this river, with several river crossings. After two semi-monotonous miles of flat terrain, we saw the trail register. Each couple signed their names and where they spent the night, and we walked another mile along the access road back to the Murano. We had hiked 13 miles in two days, and successfully indoctrinated our friends into backpacking. Much like Yellowstone, though, when Brooke had a difficult go of things with her uncomfortable EMS pack, Shauna was equally frustrated and pained by the backpack, so off to eBay it goes! It's going to take real arm twisting to get Mark and I back out to REI to shop for a pack for his wife, for sure.
The last leg of the trip was the easiest. We stopped in Gorham for lunch at a pizza shop, and then once we hit the road with Brooke driving, I slept in the passenger's seat, while Mark and Shauna conked out in the backseat. Three hours later we were back in Massachusetts, having logged another successful hiking trip in the books.